Chinese New Year
Trip Start
Jun 04, 2008
1
35
79
Trip End
Feb 20, 2009
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Xi'an,
China
Monday, January 26, 2009
Many workers are given time off over this holiday. Lots of restaurants and shops shut their doors. Even our classes were canceled for the week. We thought initially we would take advantage of the time off and make a quick trip someplace outside of Xi'an. We changed our minds, though, after a barrage of warnings that Chinese New Year is a bad time to travel.
Bell Tower fireworks
"It is the largest migration of people in the world". "Everyone - hundreds of millions of people travel home for the holidays". "The trains would be full and the ticket lines would be endless". "Everywhere you go would be closed". "Nothing is open". This was mostly accurate but slightly exaggerated. We decided we would stay in Xi'an and enjoy the holiday with friends.The days building up to New Years is almost suspenseful. Fireworks begin popping up (literally) well in advance, and most often the time - unsuspectingly. A casually walk to the grocery store would undoubtedly encounter at least 2 or 3 stray firework shots within 30 feet. And keep in mind, these are not run of the mill Bobcats. Most of these I would guess are not legal in the west. A standard chinese cracker is about as powerful and loud as a handful back home. As the eve approaches - which is the main day for fireworks - the bombs get progressively more numerous. I asked one of my students if there was any good spot at midnight to watch a fireworks show. He laughed and told me that by the time midnight approached, I would be instead asking him what would be a good spot to get away from the fireworks.
We talked to our roommates James and Flora first and asked what they were doing. Flora is from the Chongqing in the South and her family's tradition (she couldn't make it home this year) is to watch the New Year special on TV. Apparently her whole family does this, along with about 90% of every other house, for 5 hours - 8PM to 1AM.
Bell Tower fireworks
We joined them for a traditional Chongqing hotpot dinner and maybe ½ an hour of the TV special. We couldn't understand much of any of it so we excused ourselves and met up with some other teachers who were shooting off fireworks. The bus ride over felt like we were going through a bombing raid. Crack! Boom! A string of M80's would go off blocks away and could be easily heard in the night. Showers of overhead fireworks would go off in any given direction. Simply standing on a street corner and you could hear fireworks somewhere every 2-5 seconds. (Just as I was typing this I heard more fireworks - almost 2 weeks into the new year).
We met up with Steve, Paddy, and Andy at Steve's place to shoot off some fireworks he had bought on the street corner down the road. He had a pretty good set and it took two of us to carry it all outside. Now, normally at home we would take these for an hour drive into the countryside to shoot off, but here we followed the local custom - and just took them a full 20 steps out the back door. We were inside the gated apartment complex and surrounded by 4 or 5 high rise apartment buildings reaching about 20 stories each. Another group 50 feet away from us was shooting off proper fireworks well into the air that would explode below the roofs of the apartments. Anyone with a balcony in those apartments would have a nice - if not dangerous - view. We began to light some of our small ground fireworks and had some fun taking pictures when one of the security guards came by.
Fireworks next to the apartment
My natural thought was that he was going to kick us out of the complex and take the fireworks someplace else, but instead he gave us a thumbs up and kept walking. Given our proximity and the blatant hazards for the complex and complex landscaping it was shocking to get an approval from the guard. I took my picture with him because I could. Later, on the way out we would see him shooting off some of his own fireworks with another guard both in uniform. How great is that?We left at about 11:00 o'clock because we had heard that the Bell Tower (absolute center of the city) would have a fireworks show at midnight. The ride through the city was still entertaining. We got out at the bell tower to see some police tape and a crew of workers who were stacking an area the size of a football field full of fireworks. The show started 5 minutes early and went on for about 15-20 minutes of eternity. The fireworks were going off everywhere and it was the heart of downtown. You could hardly clap your hands together as quickly as these things were exploding. It was 360 degrees around the bell tower with fireworks going in the air and firecrackers going on the ground. It about made you dizzy trying to see it all. Conversation was impossible. We tried to mime back and forth to each other about taking pictures. At some point one of the ground boxes had caught on fire and the flame grew to about 10 feet high. In the distance you could see some workers hopeless trying to kick out the fire.
After it was over we all felt like we had cotton in our ears and heard a phone ringing in the distance. The football field area from before was now littered with empty boxes and red paper shrapnel. We walked out to a small hostel nearby to play a game of pool and relax. Along the way we heard three or four separate sets of sirens zip by - surely they had a busy night ahead of them.
It was now officially the year of the Ox.
